Apple Says: Stop Unlocking Our iPhones!

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You may have seen a statement today from Apple saying that if you unlock your iPhone from AT&T, you’ll probably destroy it. Well, yeah. What do you expect?

All the way back in January, an AT&T exec promised that Apple and AT&T would take steps to make the iPhone particularly difficult to unlock. Unlocking software directly attacks Apple’s revenue model for the iPhone, which is to skim money off the monthly AT&T subscription fees. Apple’s only getting monthly money from authorized AT&T users. Ergo, it’s in their interest to make unlockers’ lives hell.

But if you parse Apple’s statement carefully, you notice they don’t say all unauthorized software will brick your iPhone. Only unauthorized unlocking software.

Apple words things very carefully. Notice that they specify only unlocking software. Not any other unauthorized software. Only unlocking software. There are dozens of unauthorized programs out there for the iPhone, including IM clients, alternative mapping programs, and such.

Apple marketing honcho Greg Joswiak told me a few weeks ago that Apple is “neutral” on those kinds of programs. After I published that to Gearlog, Apple’s PR machine went into fifth gear trying to take that statement back without taking that statement back. But look at how they very specifically phrased their quasi-retraction. Updates “will most likely break” other programs, but unlocking programs “cause irreparable damage” to the iPhone. Big difference there.

My interpretation: iPhone application developers, and those of us who love them, can continue to plow away. Yes, you’ll have to generate new versions of apps after every iPhone update, but hopefully, eventually, Apple will release the golden SDK and we’ll all be in clover.